Monday, 21 May 2012

Following is my comment on the presidential runoff vote held in Serbia on 20 May and its implications, as published on the site of the Institute for Regional and International Studies (www.iris-bg.org):

Tomislav Nikolić of the opposition Serbian
Progressive Party (SNS) has won the runoff presidential elections in Serbia
held on 20 May and will be the country’s next president. He beat the incumbent
Boris Tadić of the
Democratic Party (DS) with 49.8% to 47%, according to preliminary estimates
made by pollster CeSID. The election results have several implications.

Tuesday, 15 May 2012

Serbia has lately shown a surprising activity in its relations with some countries
from the former USSR.
These seem to be just the next embodiment of the Balkan country’s wandering
dualism in foreign policy, predicated on the two imperatives of European Union
membership and inalienability of
Kosovo.

Monday, 7 May 2012

Serbia held on Sunday, 6 May, a comprehensive
election that didn’t pose many surprises but remains important in terms of the
repositioning of the main political players on the domestic scene and the
implications for the institutional checks and balances. Serbian citizens went
to the polls to elect members of the national parliament and the regional
parliament of the northern Vojvodina province, local councillors and mayors and
a president. However formal and inconsequential the election of a president in
a parliamentary democracy may seem, in Serbia this vote carries a special
charge. It is both an outright, individualised expression of the performance of
the main parties and actually a determinant of the balance of power among
Serbia’s main institutions, given the president has the right to be formally
member of a political party and keeps his influence there and in the parliamentary
caucus.

About

I am based in Sofia, Bulgaria, formerly a journo and a researcher in the non-profit sector, now a civil servant fighting trafficking in human beings. I blog in English, Bulgarian and occasionally in some of the ex-Yugoslav languages about wine, travel and politics in the Balkans, the EU and its eastern neighbourhood. The name of the blog, излаз (izlaz), means 'egress,' 'outlet' in Bulgarian and 'exit' in Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian.